Friday, December 20, 2013

Heartbeat by Elizabeth Scott

Emma would give anything to talk to her mother one last time. Tell her about her slipping grades, her anger with her stepfather, and the boy with the bad reputation who might be the only one Emma can be herself with.

But Emma can't tell her mother anything. Because her mother is brain-dead and being kept alive by machines for the baby growing inside her.

Meeting bad-boy Caleb Harrison wouldn't have interested Old Emma. But New Emma-the one who exists in a fog of grief, who no longer cares about school, whose only social outlet is her best friend Olivia-New Emma is startled by the connection she and Caleb forge.

Feeling her own heart beat again wakes Emma from the grief that has grayed her existence. Is there hope for life after death-and maybe, for love?

Brace yourselves, Book Addicts, to cry and smile like never before with a book.

In the story we meet Emma, the main character, who's mother is brain dead but is kept alive to maintain the baby she was carrying when she collapsed alive. Before that she was a happy teenage girl, studious and falling in love with intelligent and petulant boys. Now she doesn't care anymore about the things that once were important and she is definitely full of anger. She's furious with her stepdad for keeping her dead mom half-alive, she's furious with the unborn baby for the risks her mother put herself on to have him or her in order to make Emma's stepfather happy and she's furious with the unfair world.

As you can imagine, Ms. Scott brought a difficult subject to this story. A moral one. Would you keep your mother alive even if she's brain dead, gone forever, to save an unborn baby? Is it wrong for Emma to hate the baby even if it's not his/her fault? Is it wrong to blame her stepdad for her mother's dead? And, is it wrong to feel that much anger?

Emma's mother was, what we could call, old to have carefree pregnancy. She was in her mid-forties so this means that the baby could have difficulties. Plus Emma's mom had health problems and the doctors told her it would be too risky.

I understood Emma's attitude towards the world and specially towards Dan, her stepfather. He never asked what she wanted, what she thought her mother would like to do. He just made his decision right away. Plus she's an amazing main character. She's someone you can relate yourself and put yourself in her skin. It's really easy to understand her situation and you are unable to judge her.

Caleb is also what I like to call a lost soul. Her sister died when he was watching her and his parents blame him for what happened. And he also blames himself. He did a serious of bad choices and end up building that anger that Emma's so familiar with now.

It's really nice to read how two people surrounded by grief, guilt, anger and a world that seems to not understand them, find themselves and in the process they find love after death. Ms. Scott beautifully wrote the process of understanding each other and finding a friendship thanks to their own grief and anger. After that, they started to need each other. And then they find each other and fall in love. So, yes, Elizabeth Scott created a romantic story in the most hopeless situation: suffering the death of a loved one and loose your path in life.

I truly recommend this book and hope that you give Emma's story a chance, because I know you're going to love it. But first, make sure you have tissues with you!

Heartbeat

by Elizabeth Scott

- Excerpt from Chapter 3 -

“Hey,” Olivia says, and I know it’s
her because I would know her voice anywhere. We’ve been friends since fifth
grade, and we’ve been through period trauma, boy crap, bad hair, her parents
and their ways. And now Dan and his baby.

“Hey,” I say. I wipe my eyes and
look at her. “How’s the car?”

Olivia makes a face at me but
also wraps an arm around my shoulders, steering me toward our lockers. Her
parents gave her a fully loaded convertible when she got her license, one with
a built-in music player, phone, navigation system—you name it, the car had it.
Could do it, and all at the touch of a button.

Olivia sold the car—through the
one newspaper left in the area, which is basically just ads—and bought a used
car. It’s so old all it has is a CD player and a radio. We bought CDs at yard
sales for a while, but all we could get was old music, which we both hate, and
the radio is just people telling you that what they think is what you should
think, so we mostly just drive around in silence.

It used to bother me sometimes
but now I like it. The inside of my head is so full now that silence is…I don’t
know. There’s just something about knowing Olivia is there, and that we don’t
have to talk. That she gets it. Gets me and what’s going on.

Her parents were unhappy about
the car, though. Really unhappy, actually, but then there was a big crisis with
one of their server farms at work and by the time they surfaced for air they
hadn’t slept in four days. And when they said, “Olivia, that car was a gift,”
she said, “Yes, it was. A gift, meaning something freely given, for the
recipient to use as she wanted to, right?”

As we hit her locker, we pass
Anthony, and he says, “Ladies,” bowing in my direction. A real bow too, like it’s
the nineteenth century or something.

“Ass,” Olivia says.

“A donkey is actually not as
stupid as people believe. However, you are entitled to your own beliefs about
asses. And me.” He looks at me. “Hello, Emma.”

I sigh. “Hi, Anthony.”

“If you ever want to talk about
your grades, do know that I’m here.”

I can’t believe I ever thought
the way he talked was interesting. It’s just stupid, like he’s too good to
speak like a normal person. “I know, Anthony.”

“I really would like to be of
assistance to you. I believe in helping everyone. I’m talking to Zara Johns
later. I think she feels threatened by the fact that I’ve been asked to help
her organize the next school blood drive.” Translation: he’s butted in, and
Zara’s furious.

“Either that or she just doesn’t
like you. Emma, let’s go,” Olivia says, slamming her locker shut, and we head
for mine.

“You okay?” she says, and I nod.
Anthony doesn’t bother me at all anymore, just like Mom said would happen. I
look at him and feel nothing. Well, some annoyance, but then, who wouldn’t after
listening to him talk?

Of course, I didn’t always think
that he was annoying. I open my locker, deciding not to go down the Anthony
road, and hear the guy next to me say, “No way! I mean, everyone knows what’ll
happen to Caleb if he steals another car.”

Olivia and I glance at each
other. If Anthony is the ass end of the smart part of the school, Caleb
Harrison is the ass end of the stupid part. He’s a total druggie and three
years ago, when we were freshmen, he came to school so high he couldn’t even talk.
I heard that stopped last year, but then, as soon as school got out, his
parents sent him off to some “tough love camp,” which is rich-people code for
boot-camp rehab.

He came back seemingly off drugs
but newly into stealing cars. He started by grabbing them at the mall and
parking them in a different spot, but then he stole a teacher’s car.

And then he graduated to a school
bus. It was empty at the time, but still, I heard that got him a couple of
weeks in juvie, or would have except for his parents, who intervened. I guess
now he’s taken yet another step forward and by lunchtime, I know what Caleb
stole.

His father’s brand-new,
limited-edition Porsche. And he didn’t just steal it. He drove it into the lake
over by the park, drove right off the highway and into the water. The police
found him sitting on the lake’s edge, watching the car sink. They were able to
pull it out, but water apparently isn’t good for the inside of a Porsche.

“You think he’ll go to jail this
time?” Olivia asks as we sit picking at our lunches. I love that we have lunch
together this semester, but it’s the first lunch block, and it’s hard to face
food—especially cafeteria food—at 10:20 in the morning.

“I guess it depends on his
parents,” I say. “Last time they talked to the judge or whatever. They’ll
probably just ship him off again. He must hate them, though.”

“Yeah. To sit by the lake and
watch the car sink like that—”

“Exactly.”

“Even when my parents are sucking
their lives away with all their computer crap, I’d never do anything like mess
with their stuff,” she says. “How can you hate someone who raised you, who
loves you so—” She breaks off.

Olivia nods and I think about hate.
I understand what can make someone do what Caleb did, although I don’t think a
bored, rich druggie really gets hate. Not real hate.

ELIZABETH SCOTT grew up in a town so small it didn’t even have a post office, though it did boast an impressive cattle population. She’s sold hardware and panty hose and had a memorable three-day stint in the dot-com industry, where she learned that she really didn’t want a career burning CDs. She lives just outside Washington, D.C., with her husband, and firmly believes you can never own too many books.